For tenth blog I wanted to take it easy and cover Kurdistan’s natural world. It was difficult to find substantial articles with information on Kurdistan’s ecosystem but I managed to find a few good ones!
The first article I enjoyed was actually a blog from someone that visited Kurdistan, its title is “Iraqi Kurdistan: Impressive Landscape, and Stunning Nature.” The author of the blog commented on how peaceful and lonely the landscape was (lonely meaning that it wasn’t filled with buildings and cars and humans). All she claimed to hear was the sound of bugs, birds, cowbells, whistling wind, and far off rumbling thunder. She described the land as “beautiful rough nature” I believe she was referring to how mountainous and rocky the region is. She ended the blog with a focus on Kurdistan’s sunrises and sunsets, claiming that the sun quickly rose and quickly set.
Here are a few pictures that she took…
My last article, was off of liveleak (lol, sorry) its title is, “Kurdistan Nature – The Switzerland of the Middle East.” The article briefly speaks about Kurdistan’s blessing of not only its breathtaking land but also its blessing of natural resources. The article argues that Kurdistan land’s resources is a reason to why the Kurdish people have been suppressed by the nations its divided between.
And here are a couple photos from this article..
I found this to be most interesting because before I started this blog and studying the region in depth I had always thought that their resources was the primary reason why its nations were so adamantly unwilling to give them autonomy. With all the articles I read over the duration of this semester I did not read one article that gave Kurdistan’s resources as the main stake reason to why they were not autonomous. Now that I think about it I don’t remember reading anything that gave reasons to why the nations wouldn’t grant the Kurds autonomy.
What I also found interesting was how both articles referred to Kurdistan as lonely. In the first article she mentioned how quiet and lonely the land was and in the second article called Kurdistan the “Switzerland of the Middle East.” Although he was just referring to the beauty of the landscape, Switzerland is kinda like the black sheep of Europe (even though that’s the way they like it) as is Kurdistan to the Middle East.
The picture below is the Kurdish Citadel of Erbil located in Iraqi Kurdistan, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world..
I thought this picture of Erbil captured the main motif of my study – which is that the Kurdish people are alone, have no friends, no allies – as famously said “The Kurds have no friends but the Mountains.”
-Natalie